Allow graphviz path to be passed on the command-line

+1 vote
asked Sep 17, 2020 in Wanted features by RedX2501 (220 points)
Deploying plantuml curerntly on now windows machines is cumbersome as it requires setting an environment variable.

When wanting to use it with VSCode it is even more awkward as we cannot just bundle the dot executable with our tools repository and set the path up in the vscode configuration files. This means that new users need to setup a variable before they can use it.

Additionally it is not possible to use graphviz versions in different locations because the environment variable is global.

Allowing to path the path to dot on the plantuml command line would solve all these problems.

Pleas consider implementing this feature.

1 Answer

0 votes
answered Sep 17, 2020 by plantuml (294,960 points)
selected Sep 17, 2020 by RedX2501
 
Best answer

See https://plantuml.com/en/command-line

You can use -graphvizdot flag to set the path to dot on the plantuml command line.

Does it help ?

commented Sep 17, 2020 by RedX2501 (220 points)
Yes in theory it would help but now I'm not sure if it is the VS code plugin here that is at fault or the library.

I tried passing `-graphvizdot relative/path/to/dot.exe`

and yet the error message from testdot (not the command line one but the one in a file) is:

Dot executable is null

It would be much nicer if when given the graphvizdot option it would show that it was given the option and to which full path it resolved the given path. This would help debugging these kinds of errers.
commented Sep 17, 2020 by RedX2501 (220 points)
I have opened the issue https://github.com/qjebbs/vscode-plantuml/issues/340 to track it there.
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